Our false innocence, our real guilt

The big headline at Drudge is:

SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS

I’m sorry to sound so brutal, but there are no innocents in America. This society has normalized the abnormal and the evil. In particular it has normalized, in the all-surrounding mass entertainment media, displays of extremely sensate, grotesque, and perverted violence, and no one in the society publicly opposes it. Therefore the whole society shares the guilt. And children share the guilt by association with their parents and with the whole society. (Note to reader: Before you conclude that I’m crazy, read on and see my further refinements and explanations of that statement, both in the main entry and in the comments.) Societal guilt is not neat and precise and fair to individuals in the way it works out. Everyone partakes of it and everyone is liable to receive the consequences of it, even if, as is the case with children, they are personally innocent.

Our society has also destroyed norms in taking a non-judgmental and libertarian position on mentally disturbed and dangerous people who once would have been isolated from society. It would be unfair and oppressive to institutionalize the mentally ill, so we let them move about at liberty where ultimately many of them commit violent crimes.

But no one notices our systematic normalization of the normless. People seem to think that because they themselves are not bothered or harmed by this normless world of violence and madness, no one will be harmed by it. But not everyone is equally stable. Some people are more vulnerable to messages of sadism, savage violence, rampant lust, and murder than others. They need a sane and well ordered society to remain well-ordered themselves. But our society hurls everyone into moral chaos and assumes everyone will be ok, because, after all, if you don’t like perverted and violent messages in the surrounding society, you’re free to ignore them, right? Isn’t that what every libertarian and “freedom”-loving conservative like Rush Limbaugh says?

While our society manufacturers suicidal false guilt, such as the guilt of whites for their fictional racism against blacks, it ignores its own actual guilt in having built a continent-sized Sodom where anything goes. Yet as soon as something bad happens, the Sodomites—meaning the residents of Sodom—cry, “But we thought our town was safe!” Amazing. Mass murders have of course previously occurred in “safe” towns. Yet each time another mass murder takes place in another “safe” town, everyone is shocked and rushes to tie pink ribbons on trees and hold prayer-and-therapy vigils and hug each other—symbols of their own invulnerable and utterly false sense of innocence.

- end of initial entry -

Ed H. writes:

As they track down the story of Adam Lanza, and all standard parts fall into place—the weak absent father, the dingbat single mother, the liberal, well-meaning psychologist who was “working” with Adam, the shallow friends who found him “edgy” and “different,” Adam’s cultural life which consisted of an addiction to violent imagery, music, and movies supplied by the same media-political complex that is now feigning “gas all of America is brought before the microphones blinking, crying, totally uncomprehending, we will notice one repeated phrase, a phrase so universal, so emblematic of Liberal America and its mounting catastrophes that I am proposing it become the new national motto, or rather the epitaph to be engraved on the tombstone of the Republic:

“HOW COULD IT HAVE HAPPENED?”

LA replies:

Man, you are good. :-)

Ed H. replies:

Evidently in the supernal realms our spirits are muy simpatico. I wrote that without looking at VFR first.

Henry S. writes:

You wrote:

“Therefore the whole society shares the guilt. And children share the guilt by association with their parents and with the whole society.”

I really don’t understand what you are saying here. Or perhaps I don’t want to. In any case, if you’ve a mind to, I’d appreciate a clarification.

LA replies:

If a whole society, as a society, embraces evil, everyone in the society, regardless of whether he personally did anything wrong, is likely to receive the consequences of that evil.

Did the people who were killed in the 9/11 attack deserve what happened to them? Of course not. They were the victims of a devilish crime. At the same time, the victims were members of a society which had normalized the normless—which, specifically, had allowed the adherents of a religion of war and murder freely to enter its doors and move about therein. And they all warmly supported that ideology of indiscriminate openness to evil and to enemies. In that sense, they were complicit in their own murder.

December 15

Andrea C. writes:

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

I understand your righteous anger. Many of us are getting into battle mode.

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

Kristor writes:

This is not to disagree with your analysis of the wave of mass murders in the last 20 years or so as symptomatic of liberal, morally nominalist society reaching its logical absurd conclusion, but to specify one of the methods by which this devolution is being achieved: the apotheosis of the materialist psychoanalytic approach to the predicaments of human existence in the widespread prescription of psychoactive drugs.

Zippy Catholic pointed me to the relevant links. One is to an essay by a physician at Lew Rockwell. True, he begins with a nod to the truthers. But then he proceeds to lay out the devastating facts. Of these, the most powerful is pulled directly from the Physician’s Desk Reference:

The Physicians’ Desk Reference lists the following common adverse reactions (side effects) to SSRI [Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor] antidepressants (among a host of other physical and neuropsychiatric effects). None of these adverse reactions is listed as Rare.

• Manic Reaction (Mania, e.g., Kleptomania, Pyromania, Dipsomania, Nymphomania)
  
• Hypomania (e.g., poor judgment, over spending, impulsivity, etc.)
  
• Abnormal Thinking
  
• Hallucinations
  
• Personality Disorder
  
• Amnesia
  
• Agitation
  
• Psychosis
  
• Abnormal Dreams
  
• Emotional Lability
  
• Alcohol Abuse and/or Craving
  
• Hostility
  
• Paranoid Reactions
  
• Confusion
  
• Delusions
  
• Sleep Disorders
  
• Akathisia (Severe Inner Restlessness)
  
• Withdrawal Syndrome
  
• Impulsivity

The website emphasizes:

Adverse reactions are most likely to occur when starting or discontinuing the drug, increasing or lowering the dose or when switching from one SSRI to another. Adverse reactions are often diagnosed as bipolar disorder when the symptoms may be entirely iatrogenic (treatment induced). Withdrawal, especially abrupt withdrawal, from any of these medications can cause severe neuropsychiatric and physical symptoms. It is important to withdraw extremely slowly from these drugs, often over a period of a year or more, under the supervision of a qualified and experienced specialist, if available. Withdrawal is sometimes more severe than the original symptoms or problems.

LA replies:

This is powerful. We are a society on drugs. Especially children and young people. We pump young people with dangerous psychoactive drugs and then we’re shocked at their anti-social or violent behavior.

Jeanette V. writes:

As a retired psychiatric nurse I have seen how much these medications have helped people. Yes, the side effects are extremely serious, especially when starting and stopping. There are two things that are troubling about the use of psycho active drugs these days.

(1) Years ago people who were started on these powerful medications when they were inpatients at a hospital so they could be closely monitored. That is no longer being done. People are sent home with these medications and they and their family have no clue how dangerous this medication can be.

(2) Today it seems family physicians are now prescribing powerful psychotropic drugs for bad behaviors much of which can be directly tied to the lack of parenting. (Children being raised by strangers in day care and the hours and hours they spend in front of the TV being spooned fed violent amoral garbage).

LA replies:

I agree that the these drugs have helped many people. And I agree that the use of these drugs on children, mainly boys, “for bad behaviors much of which can be directly tied to the lack of parenting,” is an extremely terrible thing that stems directly from our society’s normalization of the normless, a.k.a. liberalism.

A reader writes:

Subject: Our false innocence, our real guilt

That is one of the best things you’ve ever written.

Paul T. writes:

You wrote:

“Therefore the whole society shares the guilt. And children share the guilt by association with their parents and with the whole society.”

Read your explanation but am still troubled by this. The 9/11 victims who were adults can be held as responsible as the general run of their fellow citizens for the state of society that made 9/11 possible (and in particular, society’s willingness to tolerate the presence among us of hostile Islamic invaders). But elementary school children are so undeveloped and so much at their elders’ disposal that I honestly can’t see how they share “guilt by association,” unless (as in your second crack at it) you turn this into what seems a very different statement, namely that the children suffer the consequences of their elders’ immoral behaviour. That we can all agree with. But the earlier form of the statement seems to express something else—the kind of all-encompassing disgust that God is said to have experienced just before sending the Great Flood. Yielding to that intensity of disgust, on the part of a human, sounds to me like a temptation best resisted.

LA replies:

Thank you for your deeply insightful comment, in which you distinguish between my different ways of putting the point about guilt. Yes, my “second crack” at it came closer to what I meant. I obviously did not mean that young children are personally guilty, but that everyone, including children, must share the consequences of the guilt of their society.

At the same time, now that you have pointed it out, I have to admit that there was in my remarks, though unconciously, an element of the “all-encompassing disgust that God is said to have experienced just before sending the Great Flood.” I do feel that way sometimes. Sometimes a friend and I will half-jokingly (and I underscore that I said “half”) quote radio host Bob Grant’s trademark comment that he’s ready for a comet to come and destroy the earth. And I agree with you: God may have the right to say something like that; a man does not.

Jeanette V. writes:

I could go on and on about daycare and the damage hours and hours of TV does. A short story about my daughter. When she was born our little black and white TV broke. We just didn’t bother to get another one. She was never systematically brainwashed by liberal propaganda coming from the TV. Therefore when she finally went to a public school in the fourth grade she was already thinking for herself.

She went to an alternative school (I have no clue what that was except it was small the classes were not separated much like her private school) Turns out her two teachers were “out” lesbians. They tried to fill her with anti-male garbage, none of which she bought. When she was in the fifth grade Reagan bombed Libya and the lesbian teachers organize a march (around the block with hand made signs) against the bombing and in support of the children the U.S. was murdering. Vivian called and asked me to come and get her, there was no way she would be part of that embarrassing silliness.

She was also learning how to shoot at age ten. The lesbians hated everything she and we stood for. They once even expressed to her how they couldn’t understand how she lived in such an oppressive home.

The only reason a ten year old child had that much common sense was the fact she hadn’t had it brainwashed out of her by the liberal media.

I realize this a little off topic but it really shows just how much children are molded by outside forces and today’s parents just let it happen.

A reader writes:

I must respectfully but vehemently dissent from your thesis concerning the causes of the recent school massacre.

If one consults statistics on societal rates of violence during pre-modern times, one discovers that these eras, in which the conservative cultural attitudes you praise were still intact, were in fact very violent by present standards.

The Middle Ages were an absolute bloodbath. The 18th and 19th centuries were far more violent than today. Violence only troughed in Western nations in the 1930s, I believe.

Here’s a link on this subject.

LA replies:

As a brief answer, I would say that the conditions of widespread violence in the Middle Ages were utterly different from those of today and are not very relevant to this discussion. Also, we would have to discuss which type of violence in the Middle Ages, and which period of the Middle Ages, you are referring to.

Also, to say that the “conservative cultural attitudes” I praise were intact in the “violent” Middle Ages depends on what precise aspect of the Middle Ages we are speaking of. The violence of Germanic semi-barbarians who only were Christianized and civilized over a period of centuries? The extreme violence—such as hanging, drawing, and quartering—used by kings and governments against criminals and political enemies? What relevance do these and other Medieval phenomena have to contemporary mass murders by mentally disturbed young men?

References to “the level of violence” per se, without context and specifics, are not particularly helpful and can be very misleading. For example, liberals have contemptuously dismissed concerns about the ongoing black-on-white violence in this country on the basis that “violent crime has been declining.” Perhaps so. But has race-motivated black violence against whites been declining?

LA continues:

Also, I was not speaking of the level of violence in our society; I was speaking of the way our society normalizes extreme and perverse violence.

Hannon writes:

As often happens when a horrific evil visits us, VFR provides insight into the structural causes of the event and the phenomena it represents. In this case I think too much emphasis has been placed on the culpability of the media. The latter is merely a market and as such follows the trends and desires of the host society. When that society is morally corrupted the media follows. It must do this in order to survive.

I think the bell curve applies here: a minority of citizens are driving cultural norms leftward, actively seeking to smash principled boundaries, while an opposing minority struggles to resist attacks on traditional order. In between is a majority that has been taken by materialism and hedonism and they are the lackeys of the mass media. This median blob of apathetic consumerist humanity is also the main barrier to substantive advances in politics and culture.

I do agree, however, that the media exacerbates the sickness of content in many shows and movies. They are always trying to stay ahead of the curve, constantly researching and guessing what will be the next outrage (to us) to excite the masses and bring in the cash. When I was an adolescent I would stay up until the wee hours watching all manner of horror movies: Dracula movies, The Thing, The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, etc. These were recognizable as pure fiction meant to entertain and frighten some rather than horrify the audience. Then, after a transitional genre in the 1960s, came a succession of more perverse and more realistic protagonists like the Halloween series, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No longer were the monsters alien. Now they represented the nightmare of unbound human nature and sadistic pleasure. Even Batman has been subject to this permutation.

You wrote recently wondering if horror is the ultimate reality for liberals. Such things are culturally relative, so when horror becomes their reality as against what we seek to conserve, we will know.

Kristor continues from his previous comment:

Some further thoughts on this.

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) work by messing with thought, by introducing pervasive error to the basic operations of the brain. Almost by definition, they make people crazy. Indeed, they are designed and intended to craze the natural operations (however painful or dysfunctional) of the central nervous system. SSRIs interfere with the chemistry of the synapses. They therefore prevent normal thought, which proceeds by way of state changes in the brain mediated by the converse of neurons, which is regulated by synaptic firing thresholds.

SSRIs prevent normal thought. It’s a staggering notion when one contemplates it, no? We take it upon ourselves to tweak the most complex system in the universe by throwing sand into every one of its trillions of hypersensitive logic gates. It’s the hubris of Babel all over again, with similarly chaotic result.

The knee-jerk recourse to psychotropic drugs at the first sign of emotional trouble exemplifies the liberal approach to reality, which is a sloppy, sentimental, gnostic infatuation with a few compelling ideas, that neglects the complexity of the world as it really is—ideas that, as Einstein said of theories inadequate to reality, are simple, compelling, and wrong.

The nominalist, skeptical, atheist liberal cannot in the first place lodge the slightest confidence in his capacity to understand reality—his doctrines forbid such confidence, after all—and cannot therefore in the second ever relax in the faith that the world is Providentially ordered in all its parts toward proper ends, and that God is working his purpose out, however mysterious that seems to our creaturely apprehension. The liberal is doomed, then, not just to uncertainty, but to terror. He reacts, naturally enough, by seizing upon the first notion that looks as though it might offer him leverage upon his problems—as if he were a drowning man, grasping at anything that floats, even straws. We see this dynamic operating in the liberal approach to climate change, to war, to economic policy, to any part of reality that seems less than ideal. To the man benighted by the conviction of his own indomitable ignorance and inescapable vulnerability, every tiny rustle from the darkness of the surrounding forest is an occasion of terror, and prompts wild overreaction.

In olden times, our fathers reacted to obscure threats with stillness, heightened alertness, caution, prudence. They discerned with all their might, thought as hard as they could, and then acted, but only when they saw their way clear, and decisively. Knowing the wilderness as I do, it is obvious to me that this is the only way humanity could have survived to the present day.

By contrast, at the first sign of danger the liberal leaps to his feet and starts spraying the forest with his machine gun.

The iatrogenically disordered thought of the patient crazed by drugs, then, is just an outworking of the disordered thought of his society.

Gintas writes:

In an entry pointing to this entry, you write:

“Were the people of Sodom—innocent?

In a similar situation, Jesus was questioned:

There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?

I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?

I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. (Luke 13:1-5.)

The question of just how sinful or innocent the victims were (and thus, did they deserve it?) isn’t the real question, in Christ’s eyes. When Christ’s questioners start probing about these deaths, Christ’s answer is disturbing: you need to repent.

There is one thing about all this that I know needs to be done: America needs to repent. Maybe I’m assuming too much, but I gather that’s what you’re saying as well. Most solutions we’ll see, though, will be straight from the kind of thing discussed in a Jim Kalb essay: something managerial and technocratic, to try to manage the problem away with some technology. There will be no repentance.

LA replies:

Yes. I’m saying that we’re all in the same soup, and all are subject to the consequences of being in that soup. So crying about our innocence or about children’s innocence is a false way of seeing the problem.

The difference is that I am speaking of the particular guilt of this society, while Jesus is speaking of the human condition as such.

Malcolm Pollack writes:

On the shooting in Connecticut, I thought your remarks were outstanding:

… a conservative friend said to me that she’s starting to think that something has to be done about guns. But I heard a few minutes ago on Fox that the three guns the killer used were all owned legally by his mother. Which made my point for me: the only type of gun control that could have stopped such a crime would be the outlawing and confiscation of every privately owned gun in America.

Meanwhile, the entire country takes for granted demonically evil and violent entertainment. It takes for granted—when it’s not applauding—movie stars who declare on national television that they enjoyed killing white people in their latest movie. At the same time, people assume that their lives in America is middle-class, normal, and safe. The disconnect is radical, apparently incurable. We have a society in which there are no moral norms (except for the tyrannical and inverted “norms” of politically correctness), yet we are always shocked when someone puts into practice the idea that there are no norms.

I’m citing them in a post of my own today. Another point I’ll be making:

Although I am not a religious believer myself, I’ll mention something that comes up often when I discuss the “problem of evil” with theologically literate Christians. The question is: how can a benevolent and all-powerful God allow the terrible evil that men do?

The answer usually given is that in order to create Man in His own image—that is, in order for Man to have the potential to approach most closely to God Himself—it was absolutely necessary that Man should instantiate that most precious of God’s own attributes: the freedom of choice that allows him to elect his own destiny. This bears the awful consequence, however, that man, if free, must be free to choose evil. But in that freedom, and in that alone, lies Man’s only claim to real dignity, and his only chance at self-perfection. More importantly, it is the only way that he may claim his self-perfection, his movement toward the ultimate Good, as his own.

This means that as long as men are free, and are still imperfect, there will always be evil in this world—but we do not move Man toward perfection, and toward the Good, by diminishing his liberty. We must treat the disease, not the symptoms.

Jeanette V. writes:

After all that is said or written, I feel this says it all:

Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

LA replies:

I agree. On every level of our social and cultural disorder, the rejection of God is the ultimate cause.

Arius writes:

Mass shootings by young people started to happen about twelve years ago when the medical industry starting giving young people serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRI drugs. In over 95 percent of the mass shootings the perpetrator had been taking SSRIs which are known to cause violent reactions. These SSRIs should be outlawed, but instead the media run interference for the medical industry and put the blame on gun ownership.

LA writes:

What follows are e-mails from a reader who strongly denounced me over this entry, plus further responses to his denunciation.

Henry S. wrote:

You wrote:

“And they all warmly supported that ideology of indiscriminate openness to evil and to enemies. In that sense, they were complicit in their own murder.”

How the hell do you know that? Did you interview all of them personally?

If you wrote that, I hereby retract anything supportive I ever wrote to you. I am ashamed of the fact that I ever consorted with you.

These are the words of a madman.

I replied:

I’ve posted your comment.

Goodbye.

Henry S. then wrote again:

Shame on you for even hinting that these poor innocent murdered children are guilty by association with a depraved society.

I hope that one day God teaches you the evil of your words.

You appear to be a man of no loyalties. This occasionally gives you a terrible and almost enjoyable clarity. But ultimately it’s an awful flaw.

I replied:

I posted your comment denouncing and dismissing me and I politely said “Goodbye.”

And in return you write a much harsher denunciation.

May I say, that I hope that someday you may see that you misunderstood me and were unjust to me.

Please don’t reply with more abuse. Let’s let the correspondence end here.

I then wrote to a couple of readers asking their opinion:

In the entry “Our false innocence, our real guilt” I made an extreme sounding statement about our society’s guilt, particularly in relation to children.

I then explained and qualified the statement, I thought sufficiently. I made it clear that I was saying, not that children are individually guilty, but that everyone in our society including children is liable to receive the terrible consequences of the evils that our society has overall embraced. When civilizational disasters occur, everyone is affected. God’s punishments on a wicked society are not finely tuned.

However, even with my refinements of my statement, reader Henry S. was greatly offended and has denounced me as trafficking in evil ideas. I posted his denunciation.

Were you at all bothered by what I said here? Do you think I was in the wrong?

One reader replied:

My short answer is no, it didn’t bother me because I understood where you were taking it as soon as I started reading it. None of us are innocent as we all bear the mark of original sin and we unfortunately will share in whatever societal effects of our culture brings.

There is the biblical verse from exodus about the sins of the fathers being visited upon even the third and fourth generations. To me “fathers” is both a reference to a direct lineage and a societal parentage

I will think about it more

A second reader replied:

Having read what you wrote several times, I think you are basically correct. There is a sort of connective guilt that includes even these children, not in the sense that they did anything deserving of the dreadful atrocity committed against them, but in the sense that they had no choice but to be part of our perverted society.

It’s something like the taint of original sin in that it’s a guilt we all, to a certain extent, share, on account of our origin.

I replied:

Yes, it’s not original sin, but it is analogous to original sin, isn’t it?

The second reader then replied to Henry S.’s second denunciation of me which I had sent to him:

It’s a dreadful message that we are articulating: our nation is fundamentally disordered and lost. It’s not surprising that some would react with outrage when this fact is pointed out.

December 16

Jeanette V. writes:

I think once you clarified your point it was easily understood. I also saw it as analogous to original sin. I take an Orthodox view; we don’t inherit the guilt of original sin but we do inherit the consequences. Of course the children are innocent but they live in a culture that promotes the most evil and perverse things as normal so they will inevitability suffer the consequences.

I’m going to guess that Newtown, Conn is a solidly democratic/liberal town and most of the parents of these children voted for Obama and heartily approve of abortion on demand and same-sex marriage and a host of other previsions under the euphemism of “freedom.”

Stogie writes:

I have been on Zoloft for years and am going off it because I don’t like the side effects, which differ greatly by person. For me, the side effects are dizziness and lethargy. However, Kristor, whoever he is, is ignorant about Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. [LA replies: “Kristor, whoever he is … “? Kristor has been a prominent commenter at VFR for several years. You’ve never noticed him?] SSI’s merely keep more of your own brain-produced serotonin in your bloodstream for a longer period of time. Depression and anxiety feel pretty terrible and can greatly reduce one’s enjoyment of life, and reduce one’s productivity as well. It is a brain chemistry imbalance, it is organic and no amount of positive or wishful thinking will restore one to normal brain function. SSI’S are designed to restore what is normal, like most medications. They do not interfere with thought, as the misinformed Kristor stated. They merely increase serotonin, which is already present in the brain and is essential for its function.

My cousin is a psychiatrist and advised me to try Cymballta instead. I will discuss it further with my doctor and make the change if he agrees.

Robert B. writes:

Are you a madman?

Short answer—No.

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me”

The whole of Western society worships at the feet of Moloch. What else should one expect?

In my life I have known a number of troubled people. Some were suicidal, a few were deranged psychopaths. One such person was black. He was not poor, just the opposite. He grew up in a very upscale neighborhood. His father was the first black vice president of 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) corporation. We all knew there was something very wrong with him. His career started by injecting egg yolk into cat’s brains at age ten. At age twelve he was accused of raping a ten year old girl. The famous lawyer Doug Thomson, who lived down the street, got him off using the race card. This would be a recurrence through out his adolescence. All of his victims, both as a youth and as a young adult, were white.

I was repeatedly accused of being a racist and a bigot where this person was concerned. My own girl friend and high school sweetheart accused me of racism because of my statements about this person. In 1980, after a series of unsolved rapes in St. Paul, this person was finally caught. One of his victims was a women whom he knew. He entered her apartment on grand Avenue and Dale streets—the heart of the “Crocus Hill” neighborhood made famous by F. Scott Fitzgerald (who had lived one block from this corner) as well as Garrison Keillor, who lived two blocks from the corner at the time. After raping her, he tried to drown her in the bathtub—dragging her by the hair. When that failed, he used a standard screw driver causing 17 puncture wounds. When even that failed, he attempted to strangle her. He left her for dead when she passed out.

Did anyone ever admit that I was right about his guilt and that their false belief in his innocence—based purely on his race—was wrong, and apologize to me? No. Did Doug Thomson or his children, all of whom were adults at the time, ever admit that Thomson did something wrong in using the race card to get this monster acquitted? No.

Steve D. writes:

I think Robert B. has it wrong in his comment when he states that “The whole of Western society worships at the feet of Mammon.” That should be Moloch, not Mammon. [LA replies: I’ve made the correction.] Almost literally, liberals send their children into the fire. Their belief demands that they turn a blind eye to any evidence against it; and modern Americans are willing to sacrifice even their children to the idol rather than break faith. I doubt a single parent in Newtown will break faith by demanding realistic reforms—such as an end to the madness of gun-free zones, which serve only to concentrate unarmed victims in well-demarcated shooting galleries.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 14, 2012 09:14 PM | Send